


and i swear there's a ghost on this island (and his hands are red with blood)

by brophigenia



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Attempted Murder, Canon Compliant, Incest, M/M, Murder Fantasy, No Sex, One-Sided Attraction, Unrequited Love, an attempt to reconcile luke's story with ben's, and it's all bad, based on a tumblr prompt, because no one is telling the truth, mostly - Freeform, no actual incest? just luke having Badwrong Feelings about his nephew and sister, this is Bad and Wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 17:37:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16520963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: In the night, in the furthest recesses of his strained and frayed mind, Luke can admit to himself what he knew from the beginning. For longer than he cares to admit. For so long that the shame of it presses down like a stone weight, heavier than any of his other guilts.(AKA, Luke has lots of BadWrong thoughts about everyone in his life, including his nephew. An alternate take on what really happened to prompt the murder attempt.)





	and i swear there's a ghost on this island (and his hands are red with blood)

**Author's Note:**

> title from Antichrist by the 1975. Based off this (very brief) anon prompt on tumblr: 
> 
> "i want to see luke/kylo ren!!"

In the night, in the furthest recesses of his strained and frayed mind, Luke can admit to himself what he knew from the beginning. For longer than he cares to admit. For so long that the shame of it presses down like a stone weight, heavier than any of his other guilts. 

He can admit that what had frightened him the most had not been Ben’s quiet, budding darkness. 

(Everyone has quiet darkness. Or  _ un _ quiet darkness. Han’s darkness loomed within his chest, cavernous and hungry. Leila’s darkness lived in her mind, always racing, always wanting to get out. Ben’s was quieter, softer than most.)

What had frightened him the most had been the curve of Ben’s back, the darkness of his eyes and his hair, the way looking at the boy each time was like the first moment he’d seen the holo of Leia, so long ago now, a green farmboy twisted in sudden arousal for what felt like the first time. 

The boy, of course, being  _ his nephew.  _ His young nephew, who also had Han’s roguish grin when he was tugged from his contemplative surliness by unexpected competitiveness, Han’s roughshod-large hands that looked so good on the controls of a speeder. 

His young nephew,  _ Ben,  _ who had been a perfect combination of the two people that Luke loved most in the galaxy,  _ wanted  _ most in the galaxy, the two people he could not have who had come together to create a thing of beauty and then fling it upon him because they  _ trusted him.  _

That trust had been his downfall. 

He could remember it— innocent touches, ruffles of Ben’s hair, a hand on his back, always accompanied by Ben  _ looking  _ at him, eyes hot with understanding, like he  _ knew.  _ Like he  _ knew  _ and like he knew he could use it against Luke, like all it would take would be one misplaced step and then Leia would  _ know—  _

Leia would  _ know,  _ and  _ Han  _ would know, and there would be no more trust. No more love. 

No more  _ anything,  _ and that thought had shaken him to the bone. 

_ Terrified  _ him. 

And a terrified man will do desperate,  _ terrible _ things. 

He would’ve done it. No matter what he says out loud, he would have  _ done it.  _ He would have cleaved the boy in two for no greater sin than that of his bloodline, his birth, his lush mouth and straight white teeth. 

Luke would have  _ done it,  _ mad in that moment of weakness, and this is what he thinks of at night, a tired old man with no one left in the galaxy. 

He’d held himself back, but he’d lost it all anyway, and in a worse blaze of horror than he could’ve ever imagined then. 

At night he imagines that he’d  _ done it.  _ That he’d killed the boy, the boy he’d loved so terribly and desperately and  _ wrongly,  _ the boy he’d done so  _ wrongly by,  _ the boy who has wrested himself from Luke’s grasp more completely than anyone could’ve ever done, had they not been so completely betrayed. 

For it was entirely one thing to grow up knowing that the person who was supposed to care for you and protect you desired you in such a disquieting,  _ unnatural  _ way. 

It was another to be confronted viscerally with the knowledge that that same person would  _ not  _ protect you. That they would go out of their way to  _ harm you,  _ all because of their own failings. 

Their own  _ weaknesses.  _

At night, Luke thinks of what would’ve happened if he’d killed Ben then, in that hut, powered up his lightsaber and not hesitated over the way his hair was so glossy in the glowing kyber crystal light, the way he was so soft-limbed in sleep. He thinks of explaining it to Leia. To Han. 

Knows they wouldn’t have forgiven him, but they would’ve  _ understood.  _

They were afraid of Ben, too. 

Or—  _ Leia  _ was afraid of Ben. 

Han loved Ben. Loved him until the moment he died. Loved him even after, Luke is sure. 

In the  _ right  _ way. 

(And that had been why he loved Han so terribly, too; his innate  _ goodness,  _ overpowering his want to be  _ not  _ good. Han was like the Corellian sun. Leia, the Nabooian moon. Luke, a burning asteroid that  _ looked  _ beautiful from faraway but was hellbent on destroying whatever it collided with.) 

**Author's Note:**

> follow me @ brophigenia.tumblr.com


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